Pay for parking in the city with SnapScan

Street Parking Solutions, the kerbside parking operator in the Cape Town central business district, will be piloting the SnapScan alternative parking fee payment option within the CBD as from Friday 31 October 2014. Read more below:

It is anticipated that all of Street Parking Solutions’ parking marshals in the CBD will be equipped with the SnapScan technology, should the pilot scheme be successful. This alternative payment option allows motorists to pay for parking using a smartphone application (app).

‘Street Parking Solutions (SPS) is obliged to accept cash as payment for parking in the city, but can choose to accept other forms of payment as well. The City, however, is convinced that SnapScan will make payment for parking easier and more convenient for those road users who may not have cash on them,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member: Transport for Cape Town, Councillor Brett Herron.

SnapScan is a proudly South African mobile payments app, developed by FireID Payments in Stellenbosch and powered by Standard Bank. The app works with credit and most debit cards from all South African banks. Over 14 000 businesses nationwide have already signed up to accept payments via SnapScan.

To get access to SnapScan, the user must first download the app from their smartphone’s app store, e.g. from Google Play, the Apple iStore or Blackberry World. Thereafter, the user must follow the instructions in the app to load their credit or debit card details. For payment, the motorist should scan the SnapCode (in this case each parking marshal is equipped with their own uniqe code); then enter the amount they need to pay for the parking; click ‘Pay’ and enter the unique four-digit PIN or fingerprint to approve the transaction.

Once the transaction has been finalised, the parking marshal will be notified with an SMS that is sent to a dedicated SnapScan-supplied cellphone, informing the marshal that the payment has been successful. The printed parking receipt indicates that payment has been made using SnapScan.

Those parking marshals who are equipped with the SnapScan technology will be wearing a Street Parking Solution and SnapScan logo on their bibs.

‘SnapScan has always been about simplifying payments,’ said Kobus Ehlers, co-founder of SnapScan. ‘Street parking was a natural fit, since we could see the app adding value for both users and the marshals themselves. For users especially, this removes the need to fiddle with small change or rush to draw money when all they want to do is go about their business in the CBD’.

Josh Lindenberg from Street Parking Solutions explained that the app has also simplified operations on their side: ‘We spend a lot of energy managing all the small change that people use to pay for parking. We were looking at ways to simplify this process, but then we discovered SnapScan and decided it would be better to work together with an existing payments ecosystem that customers are familiar with,’ said Lindenberg.

Cape Town has the highest SnapScan footprint in the country and several thousand users make purchases every week using this technology.

‘There is clearly a security benefit for the motorists and the parking marshals as well, because with SnapScan less cash will be handled on the street. Furthermore, the City supports this pilot scheme as it will assist us to improve the management of kerbside parking in the CBD and to create a city that is well-run and efficient,’ said Councillor Herron.